Company

Website

Business Challenge

With only 15 hours a week to execute a server refresh for a 250-user, 24/7 manufacturer, Rouse Consulting Group (RCG) knew its 10-person crew needed help.

Solution

Continuum’s NOC services and Tech Advantage program; the program allows MSPs to leverage Continuum’s resources, expertise and technical personnel to complete a variety of server and desktop projects.

Results

By leveraging Continuum’s NOC technicians and Tech Advantage program, RCG hit all milestones on time, and on budget – without any issues or roadblocks

“There really isn’t a competing model out there that brings a fully-integrated solution under one roof. It’s become a very good partnership for us, one that’s enabled us to realize consistent double-digit growth for the past nine years.”

What It Means to Be an Elite Continuum Partner

Continuum’s Elite Server Care offers the company’s highest levels of RMM and NOC support, transforming the technical teams at its Network Operations Center into a complete offsite workforce ready to support its MSP partners. It’s a level of service that Paul Rouse, President at Rouse Consulting Group, depends on every day.

“There really isn’t a competing model out there that brings a fully-integrated solution under one roof,” says Rouse. “It’s become a very good partnership for us, one that’s enabled us to realize consistent double-digit growth for the past nine years.”

A True Partnership

“Having the NOC as part of our team, we’re able to take on the big fish – the new client,” says Rouse, who knows that the first 90 days of a new engagement require a tremendous amount of work. “To know that we can bring on those clients, and have hundreds of engineers available who can fill those roles and provide an immediate benefit to our new customer – that makes our company look very good.”

In addition to having the support and confidence needed to pursue larger opportunities, RCG also benefits from the breadth of technical expertise at Continuum’s NOC.

“Operationally, the NOC has a vast array of skillsets available,” says Rouse, citing migrations from on-premise Exchange® servers to Microsoft® Office 365 ™ as an example. Traditionally, RCG has relied on in-house Exchange specialists – but as the number of Exchange servers begins to dwindle, RCG’s internal skillset will need to be adjusted. Fortunately for Paul, Continuum’s NOC has the expertise and personnel needed to help fill in the gaps.

And while some RCG staff may have had concerns about working with outside technical teams, it didn’t take long for them to experience the benefits of the Continuum partnership first-hand. As Rouse puts it, “They quickly learned that the NOC was really their best friend.”

In fact, the proactive support offered by the NOC – combined with RCG’s ability to manually assign work and tickets to Continuum technicians – allows Rouse’s employees to shift their attention away from core technologies, and focus on more strategic initiatives that help grow the business and bring greater value to customers.

For 18 years, Moline, Ill.-based McLaughlin Body Co. counted on Rouse Consulting Group to help keep its 250-user, 24/7 manufacturing operations rolling.

But when McLaughlin decided it was time for a complete IT refresh, Rouse knew a project of this scope and complexity would be difficult for his 10-person team to handle alone.

Further complicating things was the fact that McLaughlin Body Co.’s 24/7 manufacturing schedule left only a 15-hour project implementation window each Sunday. With so much on the line, RCG turned to Continuum’s NOC and Tech Advantage program for support. The program allows MSPs to leverage the resources and technical expertise at Continuum’s NOC to complete a variety of server and desktop projects.

“We’ve always delivered for McLaughlin,” recalls Paul. “But this was going to be a massive project with a very limited window within which to work. We needed the additional resources of the Continuum NOC to pull this off in the correct way. Things really had to be planned well and executed smoothly because failure was not an option.”

McLaughlin Network Administrator Bill Moore worked directly with RCG and the Continuum NOC team on the project, and underscored the criticality of a transparent migration. “If any server failed at any time, production would stop, bringing the company down.”

Hitting Every Milestone

Paul called his company’s overall experience with Continuum’s NOC team an extreme success on multiple levels. “We hit every milestone on time and exactly the way we promised,” he said. “The client had no interruption to their production, or lost labor, which was extremely important to them. The end result was a server technology refresh that everybody in their organization felt was a big improvement.”

Today, RCG is integrating Continuum’s NOC project services more deeply into the company’s standard operating procedures, considering each new undertaking as an opportunity to engage them.

“This specific project cemented our relationship with Continuum even more,” Rouse says. “The NOC is such a great service and it’s such a nice addition to our company.”

Bill Moore credits RCG and the Continuum NOC Project Services Team for an implementation executed flawlessly, and with minimal impact to his company’s daily operation. “Our employees are extremely happy with the outcome of what we did. You know you’ve done a good job when there are no complaints.”

About Rouse Consulting Group

Rouse Consulting Group (RCG), established in 1995, a best-in-class provider of managed IT services and solutions for small and medium-sized businesses in 20 states spanning the Midwest, Northeast, Mid-Atlantic and Southeast regions. RCG is a major partner with industry-leading technology providers, including Microsoft, Dell, and Hewlett Packard.

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